I think Altair and IBM PC both was at least original designs, but neither were they particularly good designs either. Unfortunately I think ANSI/ISO and other standard committees was probably poorly suited to setting standards in this area. The right way back then would probably be to design a reference system and release schematics and other design information.
Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially inept product ideas.
Not in the case. Vic Gundotra was responsible that did not hold majority voting rights, who managed to convince the Google founders that did have it.
And BTW I am thinking that the EU privacy policy fiasco is probably related. And to think that the EU courts recently ruled that current data protection laws requires that search engines must remove results on request.